


two deaths, and a hundred bodies later

by Buttercup_ghost



Series: a hospital bed and guns full of iron [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Talentswap (Dangan Ronpa), Assassination, Assassins & Hitmen, Car Accidents, Character Death, Hidden Talents, I wrote the draft of this a while ago and kinda vented/projected imao, Implied Stalking, Pre-Canon, Pre-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Self-Indulgent, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Survivor Guilt, assassin Makoto Naegi, bc. of COURSE it is....., i mean not really - Freeform, mentioned/implied pedophilia, no beta we die like men, thanks kodaka, that’s just. glossed over, you know. the stuff in that one story komaru tells about her teacher in dr ae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-25 20:45:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17732357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buttercup_ghost/pseuds/Buttercup_ghost
Summary: Makoto naegi has bad luck—and that’s why the plan junko so carefully crafted goes off the rails before it even starts.This is the beginning of the story, a tragedy stretching for years, crafted from an authentic despair that only life itself could replicate; more brilliant than junkos carefully planned out destruction.





	two deaths, and a hundred bodies later

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this back in August, while I was having a low key breakdown, but I think it’s still solid, at least for a base of this story. It’s pretty bleak, but this is just the beginning, right after makotos parents died, and the desperate time after when the crash had longstanding effects on komaru. He’s not in a good headspace, and killing people doesn’t really help that. This is also just mainly outlining his emotions, and the accident, and not his logical rational. It emphasizes the feelings, which is most likely due to me being overwhelmed with mine at the time, but I feel like that’s a good place to start, if only to establish a more concrete idea of his motivations, and what drives him.
> 
> Also, I know I’ve been fairly inactive for a while, not just here but everywhere. I’ve been really stressed with school, and on top of my already chronic depression, I have seasonal aflection disorder, so I haven’t been doing very good emotionally. My moods have been unstable at best, and I can’t bring myself to talk to people most of the time, and I know that it’s hard for me to even gather motivation to write anything. I know it’s not good to isolate yourself, and I know that doing stuff I love, like writing, can help, so I’m trying to take steps to get my life in order, even if it’s slow going. Baby steps are still steps, right? Even if I feel a bit hopeless sometimes—there is something comforting about writing again. I just wish I could manage to talk to my friends, I really miss them, but... I just feel so tired and sad all the time. Hopefully writing will help.
> 
> Warnings are: assassination, self hate, survivors guilt, character death in the form of a car accident, mentioned/implied pedophilia (referencing a incident komaru sites as her reason for believing in ghosts in another episode, that really shouldn’t have been glossed over like it was but haha I’m not bitter or anything, nope not me) and a suicide attempt/suicidal thoughts

Makoto naegi has only ever loved three people in his lifetime. 

He thinks they were kind—the type of people that everyone liked. Normal, but loving. The day it happened they were taking him and komaru for ice cream, a special treat, after his eleven year old self had gotten all As for the semester, and komaru insisted she come along. Good parents, ones who loved and were loved in return.

And makoto loved them, loved them for how gentle they were. How kind, and caring. His mother cried whenever there was a particularly bad death in the news, and his father donated his bonus to charity, volunteering whenever he could. Makoto remembers, vaguely, staring up above a table as his father poured a man some soup, before ruffling his hair and telling him the importance valuing all life, and helping someone when you can.

He remembers when komaru came along. He remembers holding her in her arms, wide eyed and innocent, before proclaiming he loved her, he’d protect her. His mother grinned at him, his father snapping a photo as he smiled and smiled, crying from sheer happiness. Komaru started crying, too, but even the whining she emitted did nothing to deter his smile. 

He loved his family.

(Once, he thinks he might have loved himself, too—but such a time is long gone, faded and murky, like a water colored painting washed away.)

He still loved them, he knew he did, even if his senses have gone numb—like a photo undeveloped, only a white, blank slate where a picture should have been.

 

He loved them. He watched them die.

 

Makoto has watched many people die. It settles in his stomach funny, the knowledge that these people were alive. That they had families and feelings and loved ones, people who loved them just as he loved his parents. It feels disjointed—it feels like sand. His emotions are always shifting like the grains, fuzzy yet solid, slipping through his fingers despite being the ground just a moment ago he walked upon.

 

Theres something wrong with him.

 

A part of him died with his parents.

 

(Lucky. They said he was lucky, to have avoid any major injuries.)

(Makoto naegi knew he was anything but _lucky_.)

 

(  _Because the first people makoto ever killed were his own parents._ )

 

(He was arguing with komaru, his parents shushing them as they continued to try and drive. Somehow, the argument kept starting up again—it wasn’t anything serious, it wasn’t even about anything important to him. It was just about food, how strange it was for komaru to like fish eyeballs. His parents looked at them, trying to get them to stop it, not seeing the truck _about to crash into them—)_

(Komaru hasn’t eaten fish eyes since.)

 

The other people, they aren’t real. He knows them, knows when they wake up, when they go to work, when they go to bed—knows their life, down to the last detail. It’s a part of his job. But they’re not real to him, not really. He feels nothing.

 

He’s done it tons of times.

 

He knows how a gun feels when it goes off—the recoil of force that bruised his ribs and hands, the first time he used it. Knows how to clean the barrel, the chamber, knows what type of gun is better suited for different things.

(Knows how blood splatters after the bang, so easy, _too easy...)_

He knows, he _knows_ , and it settles like acid in his skin. He can’t remember how many times he’s done it. He can’t remember how many people he's killed.

 

(He only could remember three; his parents, and himself, all dead and gone.)

 

The only thing he loves now is komaru. Theres no room for anything else, in his heart—too small to fit anything more. It’s only because of her, that he’s alive. It’s only because of her, that he keeps moving, keeps pushing forward. Keeps living. Hoping.

 

If anything happened to her, he knows he wouldn’t survive. He knows he’d sooner to put a bullet in his head just like hes done with so many others.

It would be what he deserved.

 

(But a part of him knows in his soul, he deserves worse. Deserves to suffer.)

(It’s a clear need, one of the only clear things left in him. It’s what he deserves, it’s what he _needs—_ its the desire to suffer, to hurt in a way he’d hate. He needs it like a goldfish needs a bowl. It traps him. It keeps him alive. Other than komaru, its all he has.)

 

But as long as she’s alive and breathing, he is as well. Anything to keep that, to make her happy and smile and _be there with him,_ because he couldn't handle this alone, _oh god he can’t handle this alone don’t leave don’t leave komaru **please—**_

 

He supposed he could never handle things alone. He always needed a purpose to cling to, _people_ to cling to—living for others. Focusing everything he has to that goal, not giving up on it, no matter what. Always finding a way. It was his hope.

 

It was just amplified when his parents died.

 

He shouldn't smile when he thinks of killing.

 

He doesn't, usually. But his screams still ring in his ears, and he can’t help but grin. There’s a sadistic glee there, something satisfied and twisted. He deserved it, deserved worse.

 

(A teacher, breaking into a house, watching a girl until she stirred, finger pressed to his lips, curved up into a smile. A childlike naivety, dulled from the crash, but not gone, like his. The belief in ghosts.)

(Makoto guessed it wasn’t unreasonable, since he showed up dead the next day, bullet shot only a hour after his sister told him of her encounter.)

 

Anyone who hurts komaru deserves so, so much worse.

(Including him.)

 

 

Sometimes, he remembers his mothers smile, so different than the one he wore.

She would read him stories, her pale arms wrapping around him. He doesn’t remember her face, only black-brown hair that tickled his nose.

(His memory is haunting; like a specter, disappearing as soon as he spots it.)

 

The stories spoke of amazing things, fantastical and magical. He loved them, lived for how his mother would read them, him nestled into her arms. He’d get so caught up in her storytelling, her voice, the tales enveloping him like a blanket, evil always being defeated at the end.

Its not like real life, where the only evil now is in himself.

(All of the murders, the hitmen and assassins would die. Good would trimph as everyone cheered when they got what they deserved. Suffering and anguish like they inflicted, a justice that could only be described as revenge, yet they still labeled as karma.)

 

 

(He’ll always be the villian in his own story.)

 

 

After the car crash, he was so lost—nameless faces full of static comforting him, as his parents and sister laid in hospital rooms. He wanted to yell at them, to say he wasn’t the one they should be concerned about, to shout at them and kick and fight and just _scream._ But he didn’t. He was paralyzed in his seat, unprocessing. Vaguely, he remembers nodding, but it wasnt really him—he wasn’t there.

It was all gone. His happy life, full of love and support and bedtime stories. Innocent dreams of being a hero dying one by one.

 

He didn’t want to live.

 

He knows his aunt took them in. He knows that she tried, tried to support them when she could barely get by herself. And for that he’s grateful, if nothing else—grateful that he and komaru didn’t have to go into the system, or live on the streets. He knows other people aren’t that— _lucky—_ he’s seen people, filthy, desperate, _begging_. Seen them with signs, in the street, asking, pleading for the money they needed to survive, _to live_. Starving and dirty, wracked with disease and filth, no place to call their own, to go home to. He’s seen kids, kids his age, two red headed twins with despair in their eyes, scuffed up and damaged by a cruel world.

( _Ryouko—_ a name, a detail that stuck in his mind, even as he forgot his own parents faces.)

And he’s glad, he’s glad that’s not them, glad but hateful, spiteful and pitying. He hates how much relief is there, in him, that these people are suffering but not _them_ , not komaru. Yet the emotion is dulled, and there’s an envy growing, because despite it all, these were the type of people who could look at despair and _laugh_. Because these were the people who could embrace the feeling steadfastly, not flinching or cowering, not shutting themselves off.

He hated them, he hated them because sometimes it felt like he didn’t feel. He didn’t _feel,_  not for this world, not for this life. The selfless love in other people’s eyes, left him feeling hollow, acutely award of his own absence of connection. He was suffocating, sucking in water instead of air, fuzzy and disjointed, between his mind and reality. He couldn’t breathe past the murky feeling, he couldn’t breathe so his body went numb to the pain, from the pain. His heart was always left playing catch-up.

 

(He remembers, through the haze, how the wine bottle felt to hold, how his skin met it’s glass. He remembers, the pills in his hands, slightly sticky and moist from his warm, shaking hand. A special occasion, he thought in his delerium, recalling his aunts words. A special occcasion, to sip the red, red drink, and he could almost laugh. He doesn’t, because if he does he’s scared she’d find him, sitting in a tub at four in the morning, only the steady stream of water as it flowed keeping him company.)

(In the end, he couldn’t do it, couldn’t do anything. In the end, he only flushed the ruined, mucky pills into the toilet with a grimace, and lock the bottle of grapes and alcohol back up. Because, in the end, he couldn’t leave komaru, telling himself she needed him, telling himself he owe it to her—owed far too much to her.)

 

_(But he knew it was his fault she was like this, knew no matter how much he suffered it wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough.)_

_(He didn't deserve to live, but he didn’t deserve the release of death, either. Maybe that’s why he really threw the pills away.)_

 

Because makoto was selfish, and he knew it. Knew that at his core, he was selfish—even if he tried to not be. In reality, _that’s_ what drove him to this, to these lengths, to these actions. A selfish love, the type of love he despises, a dependency.

 

He wished he could say he could put komaru above himself.

 

But he can’t. He can’t, and that’s why Makoto Naegi is selfish. That’s why, he loathes himself. He knows, he knows that komaru wouldn’t want this, wouldn’t want this blood on his hands, these deaths on her name, but he won’t, _can’t,_ stop, because if he did, that would mean him losing her.

It’s that selfishness that drives him, when the doctors bills were too expensive, so many things to pay for, so many jobs he was already working—most, illegally, due to his age—when he couldnt afford it…

 

Makoto naegi was fourteen when he made his first hit.

 

Komaru has never killed anyone, in her life. He knows this for a fact, knows she hated that such things even occurred. She told him through tears, told him how so many murders, so many tragedies happen a day, each a world being snuffed out—told him how much she hated the lives, _galaxies,_ disappearing in the span of a hour. Hated how the white walls of the hospital mocked her, her bed safe and sound but confining, like a prison, as the tv screen spat out facts and statistics unfeelingly, all she had to keep her company day in and day out betraying her. She cried at the too many deaths, the too many tragedies, that the news reported on without feeling. She cried for them, cried out liquid pain, too caring, too empathetic, for her own good. And makoto could see the after image of his mother, as she confessed, confessed that she hated them; hated people that could snuff out someones life so easily.

 

He left feeling cold.

 

Yes, makoto naegi is selfish. That's all there is to it.

 

( _Yet he still takes the next hit requested, as soon as it’s offered._ )


End file.
